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Eco-Therapy??

I am an experienced and BACP accredited counsellor with professional indemnity insurance for outdoor work. My work has evolved into encouraging individuals to become whole and self-heal through nature based practices and encouraging use of deep imagination and creativity. I have noticed that counselling can be effective at problem solving but often doesn't seem to go far enough to help someone remain problem free.

Often there is a yearning gap still there after the 'problem' has been sorted . . . in fact the absence of the 'issue' makes it even more obvious . . . that once the anxiety has been managed or the depression's lifted and relief is felt, there's still a something missing, just out of reach, like a song from a dream. I've come to suspect that it's none other than 'hiraeth' . . . that wonderful word from Cymru that translates indirectly into 'a longing or yearning for your milltir sgwar, for homeland'. Hiraeth is not a patriotic feeling, it's about a very real lived-in relationship with Earth to whom we belong, on whom we rely completely and from whom we have become disastrously estranged.

It wasn't such a long time ago that that the word "kith" described not our wider human family as it does today in the expression "kith and kin", but the family relationship with non-human beings around us where we live.

Cymraeg (Welsh) still has words to describe that relationship of belonging and connection: "'Cynefin' is a relationship you have with the place of your birth and of your upbringing, the environment in which you live and to which you are naturally acclimatised." (Kyffin Williams). 'Milltir Sgwar' literally means your square mile but it carries the sense of how a place on earth is home, how it defines you and how you belong to it its physical attributes, its history and culture

So this is an invitation to become "bewildered", to approach the problems you have with living from an unconventional direction, by paying attention to your ability to call on your rootedness and replace the troublesome habits you've developed to manage living to this point. To start a hopeful spiralling dance towards the north, south, east and west of all you are. To learn practices of wholing and self-healing that will carry you forwards in your life and to gain a map of your inner world to help you navigate your future with courage and direction.

I have been learning Wild Mind with Bill Plotkin and others at Animas Valley Institute for several years and what I'm offering is my version of this, fused with learnings from John Young, 8 Shields and the Wilderness Awareness school, and many meanders into shamanism and nature-based mystery practices over the last 25 years. Also, I have been living with and feeling held by land that has rewilded itself from chemical dairy monoculture for nearly two decades - my home is an impeccable guide to my be-wilder-ing .

Please do email, text or phone with questions or to book a session.

Conventional knowledge is death
to our souls, and it is not really ours.

We must become ignorant
of what we have been taught,
and be, instead, bewildered . . .